You are here

Handy Man

Hang It "The biggest complaint I get from women is that when they are moving into a new place, they don't have anyone to hang their pictures," says Eli Ben- Shoshan, owner and founder of Boyfriend for Hire handyman services. And according to the guys he has working for him, the most swooning happens when his guys hang pictures or mirrors. "While some pictures need a tiny pin nail and others need butterfly sprockets to hold them firm, the reaction is always the same: You have to peel the girls off of you they're so happy."

Tip: To get whatever you're hanging level, measure the points where the nails or anchors will go from the ceiling rather than the floor. "The ceiling is always straight, and the floor is almost always crooked," says Ben-Shoshan.

Unclog It "A man who can unclog a drain is dreamy," says Shoshana Berger, editor in chief of the do-it-yourself bible ReadyMade magazine. "Any man can pour drain cleaner down a drain. I like a man who can use a pair of tweezers and a screwdriver, deal with the gross-out factor, and get whatever is clogging the drain out of there as quickly as possible."

Tip: Don't bother buying liquid drain cleaner. The fumes can be corrosive and dangerous-and it's expensive (you're literally pouring money down the drain). Instead, try using boiling water or a mixture of baking soda and vinegar to dislodge the clog, followed with repeated use of a good-quality plunger.

Build It After shoes and handbags, the thing most women can't get enough of has to be furniture. If you're lucky, the woman in your life has plenty of money and can afford to have her custom-built furniture delivered and slid directly into place. But we're guessing you're not so lucky. That means toting giant boxes of need-to-assemble goods out of the store and into her pad-where the real work of cobbling the blasted things together actually begins.

Tip: As much as we'd like to tell you to just ignore the directions and go for it, that's the absolute worst thing you can do, says Clive Cashman, a spokesperson for the home retailer IKEA (where almost everything sold requires some form of assembly). His advice: "Hold back." The temptation is to immediately start putting the thing together. "Instead, pick up the directions, and take at least a couple of minutes to scan through them," Cashman says. "Then grab an egg carton and use it to sort and divide all the screws and pieces you'll use to assemble the furniture." Build it on a piece of the cardboard box, and, to spare your aching back, put the furniture together as close as possible to where it goes. Finally, stand the thing up while she oohs and ahhs.